Silent, introverted, absent-minded 14 year-old Luca is about to radically change his quiet life as a countryside boy as he enrolls in a traditional Italian catering school, which has obviously seen better days but still keeps up strict discipline and ancien-régime etiquette, such as measuring the exact length of space between chairs around a table, the centimeters allowed for growing sideburns, or the correct way to wipe the inside of a glass (clockwise!).
Davide Maldi, director and cameraman, centers his slow-paced documentary completely on Luca and his internal battle against boredom, conformity and arbitrary discipline. Luca's mind is far away in classes, be it French, Law or how to perfectly fold a table cloth or a napkin. As his grades and performance worsen, the confrontation with his teachers is inevitable: will Luca bend his will?
Though passive-aggressive Luca is the opposite in temperament from Lou Castel's explosive, fiery character in Marco Bellocchio's "Fists in the Pocket", there's something equally rebellious about his looks and soul (hence the title of my review). The inquisitive brow, defiant grin and tense body reminded me of Castel, as well as Luca's habit of testing the limits of those in power and -- you guessed it -- keeping his tight fist hiding in the pocket of his perfectly pressed trousers (an absolute nay-nay posture, as we learn along).
In a broader context, the film is also about the near absurdist attempt to preserve old, aristocratic, terribly démodé traditions in a country badly damaged by economic problems, unemployment, political cataclysms and the apparently insoluble regional and class conflicts that Italian films have been telling us about for the last 80 years.
While the subject is original, curious and attractive, and Maldi is himself a young observant with a very keen eye, Luca's slowly folding inside himself makes the film drag in bits -- surprisingly not in the unbelievable disciplinarian routines but in the long scenes of Luca in class or by himself in the woods. Minus some 15 or 20 minutes, "The Young Observant" would have been really good.
